Several months ago, I read a short book called Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli. A product of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, this book presented fresh ideas about effective meetings.
It should be required reading for every church leader. Here’s just a small taste.
We’ve become so accustomed to long meetings, boring meetings, meetings lacking a clear purpose that our curiosity about whether there might be a better alternative has faded into the background. If an operating room were as sloppily run as our meetings, patients would die. If a restaurant kitchen put as little planning into a meal as we put into our meetings, dinner would never be served. – Al Pittampalli
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve both led and participated in too many time-wasting, life-draining meetings. The book goes on to give seven principles for better meetings. Among them:
- Meet to support a decision that’s already been made.
- Move fast.
- Limit the number of attendees.
- Reject unprepared people.
- Refuse to be informational.
Al was kind enough to spend about 20 minutes talking about specific applications for pastors and church leaders. Watch the interview below.
Read this Before Our Next Meeting is well worth reading. Get the book from my Amazon store here.
After a dozen years as a student pastor, and five years a church-starter, I'm the Chief Operating Officer of 
[...] change the way you think about meetings (and help you all stop wasting time in useless meetings). Here’s an interview I did with the [...]